The state of think tanks

On Think Tanks published its State of the Sector report last week, surveying 299 think tanks across 94 countries. Two thirds of the respondents named funding as a challenge this year, and almost half expect the environment to get worse, which is surprising to read when many are expecting a huge surge of philanthropic money.

The report describes this as being a structural issue, which makes sense to me. 40.5% of these organizations hold less than three months of operating reserves, and 22.1% have none. This is mainly because they run on short-term project grants that don’t cover overhead (only 18% are predominantly core-funded, and over a third work on contracts of a year or less). It tracks that organizations with no reserves overwhelmingly expect funding trouble, while those with a year’s cushion mostly don’t.

I also found it surprising that pessimism is worst in the wealthiest regions. The Anglosphere has the deepest reserves and the most core funding in the survey, and also the largest share of organizations expecting mergers or closures. I’m still figuring out what to make of that!